Whitbread gets green light for 400-room Hub by Premier Inn in south London

Whitbread has been given the green light to open one of its largest Hub by Premier Inn hotels close to London’s South Bank.

The budget hotel giant has been granted planning permission to convert Dorset House, a 90,000 sq ft former office building on Stamford Street in Southwark, into a 421-room hotel.

Compact bedrooms will be built within the existing nine-storey office space, while the basement area will be converted to an F&B space.

It will be the first Hub by Premier Inn to open south of the River Thames and will be within a 10-minute walking distance of Waterloo Station and Royal Festival Hall.

Construction work is expected to begin in the second half of 2026 with a target date for opening in summer 2028.

Whitbread has acquired four office sites this year with plans to develop them into hotels, including Victory House in Holborn. Together, the properties will add more than 1,000 rooms to its portfolio, representing a £100m investment.

Jonathan Langdon, senior acquisition manager for Whitbread, said: “The buildings we have acquired in 2025 bring four outstanding hotel locations into our secured pipeline in places where we are either not yet represented or are responding to strong, year-round demand from our customers.”

The budget Hub by Premier Inn launched in Covent Garden in 2014 and has since expanded to 18 hotels in London and Edinburgh.

Whitbread, which owns around 850 UK hotels, said it expects its business rates bill to rise by between £40m and £50m during its next financial year due to changes announced in the Budget.

The company said it would look to cut costs by around £60m to deal with the impact.